My husband and I recently bought a house, and we’d like to plump up our emergency fund just in case we have a large house expense. (Because, of course, when you have little savings, expensive things start to break. It’s the law of nature, right?)
To inspire myself, I reread America’s Cheapest Family Gets You Right on the Money by Steve and Annette Economides. One strategy of theirs that I latched onto is once a month shopping. The Economides shop once a month for their family of seven and right after shopping day, they make 15 to 17 freezer meals to help them on nights when they’re too busy to cook.
Alright, I already regularly cook freezer meals, so how hard could it be to shop once a month for my family of five?
As it turns out, very tough, at least the first month.
Breaking Bad Habits
I have a bad habit of making a big shopping trip on the weekend and then running to the store for this or that several times a week.
Do you do this, too? From all of the harried shoppers I see at the store at 5 p.m., I’m guessing I’m not alone.
The problem is that each time I run to the store, I buy more items than I initially went to the store to buy. The Economides recommend once a month shopping to avoid this kind of impulse buying that blows up the grocery budget.
Making the Big Shopping Trip
This month, eager to change my bad shopping habit, I scouted the deals and made my big, once a month shopping trip. I spent two days afterward cooking up meals to put in the freezer. I was set, or so I thought.
Turns out, limiting the impulse to stop by the store is more difficult than I thought.
There are a number of reasons why we’re struggling:
My husband likes fresh fruit and veggies. Our family wiped these out after a week, so back I went to the store to pick up some more.
I’m an impulse eater. If something sounds good to me, I want to make the recipe and have it for dinner. I don’t want to wait until my next monthly shopping trip to get the ingredients to make it. (The whim would have passed by then, which is the point, I guess.)
Eating up odds and ends at the end of the month is not fun. Sure, trying to make meals out of what food is left is fun, but the last few days, most of it doesn’t taste good.
Taking Baby Steps Moving Forward
While it would be easy to give up on the idea of once a month shopping, I haven’t yet because I know it can be a big money saver. Instead, I’m going to back up and move to twice a month shopping. This will allow me time to plan out our meals for two weeks, making sure we have all the ingredients we need. Many fruits and veggies stay good for nearly two weeks, so my husband will have the fresh fruits and veggies that he wants.
I don’t know if I’ll ever fully implement once a month shopping, but if I am successful with twice a month shopping, I will still significantly reduce my impulse shopping trips and improve my grocery budget.
How often do you grocery shop? Are you a multiple trip, impulse buyer like I am (was?), or are you a grocery store ninja?
Melissa is a writer and virtual assistant. She earned her Master’s from Southern Illinois University, and her Bachelor’s in English from the University of Michigan. When she’s not working, you can find her homeschooling her kids, reading a good book, or cooking. She resides in New York, where she loves the natural beauty of the area.
Keeping up with the Joneses is bad. We know that. From a financial perspective, we spend a great deal of our time overcoming the green monster called envy in order to keep our lives in some semblance of financial order. We know the Joneses down the street with their big, fancy new SUV. We see them going on long family vacations. And we know the guy that mows their lawn. But, we also know that there’s a pretty high probability that they still owe a ton of money on that SUV. That that family vacation likely was financed through a credit card. Their entire financial life depends on them keeping their well-paying jobs.
Forget the Joneses
I’d like to talk about another family. The Smiths. You don’t know them. We don’t talk about them like we do the Joneses. Why don’t we? Because, outwardly, their lives are nothing to be envious of. They don’t own a big house on a double lot. They don’t drive a brand new Escalade. Their family vacations consist of weekend trips to state parks or trips to visit family a couple of counties over. Outwardly, they may even seem a bit downtrodden. They may seem (GASP!) a bit poor.
Sometimes they are. Sometimes, they are truly victims of their circumstance, or their poor financial choices along the way. But, for every one of those families, there’s at least two that aren’t poor. They have well paying jobs. They have money in the bank. And they occasionally barbeque a steak on the cheap grill they have on their back deck. It’s those Smiths I’d like to talk about.
It’s the Quiet Ones You Have to Watch Out For
Why don’t we know the Smiths? Because we live in a society that is enamored of our celebrity. We hang on every word that that famous athlete, or famous actress says. We try and model our lives after theirs. They live a glamorous life, full of flashing photography, red carpets, and any number of endorsement deals.
Who wouldn’t want to be like that? Short of being famous, we decide that we’ll see how close we can get. The bank doesn’t turn us down for that big house, big car, or vacation to the same beach that the celebrities hang out on. Maybe we’ll even get to see one of them!
But, it’s the Smiths we should know. We should know people who live their lives responsibly within their means. We should know people who live for more than having our fellow neighbors think about how rich we are, and how rich our lives must be. We should be the Smiths. We should be the people who drive the reliable older car without the flashy rims and booming sound system. We should be the people who live in the smaller house that we try and repair ourselves.
Society may push us towards that Joneses sort of lifestyle. After all, what would become of some of the companies if we stopped trying to keep up with the Joneses and stopped buying all their luxury goods? What would the news and tabloids cover if we weren’t constantly buying their rags in order to find out what sort of clothes the princes and princesses of some foreign country were wearing this spring?
Shiny Facades, Crumbling Foundations
All around us, there are Smiths. We don’t notice them, and we rarely get to know them. We’re surrounded by the Joneses, and the shiny facades of businesses and economies that are driven by their reckless spending. But, under those shiny facades is a crumbling foundation. The economy of the world is on shaky ground. We saw just how shaky it really was in 2008. When the housing market crashed, it very nearly brought the entire world economy with it. Luckily, the economy was strong enough at the time to take a beating. It wasn’t strong enough to bounce right back. It’s been a long slog back to where we were. We aren’t even back there yet. There are still parts of the world that are hurting economically.
Imagine, for a moment, if we rebuilt that economy, not on the sands of bailouts and extended unemployment benefits, and instead built it on the bedrock of hard work and frugality that got us where we were in the first place. Imagine if we had seen the folly of our loose spending ways and tightened our belts, stuck to our budgets, and started building an economy that doesn’t shake and quiver at the smallest rise in unemployment, or the slightest miss in an earnings report?
What if, instead of running around willy-nilly chasing the lifestyle of the Joneses, we were calmly working ourselves into the stable economy of the Smiths? What if we all didn’t have wait for our next paycheck to buy gas because our last paycheck went to our mortgage and car payments? What if we were able to fill a tank of gas from the cash in our bank account and know that we still had our emergency funds to help us along should a real emergency come along?
We can. We can bring our spending in line with our earning. We can sell the fancy car that we don’t need. We can downsize our house to something that we can afford. Sure, the dependable used car you buy might not have as much chrome as the fancy one. It might not have the same heated seats. And the house you downsize to might not have a walk-in closet, or a jacuzzi bath tub. I’ll let you in on a little secret. You don’t need them. They’re luxuries. You only think that it’s normal to have those things because the Joneses told you it was.
I started this blog to share what I know and what I was learning about personal finance. Along the way I’ve met and found many blogging friends. Please feel free to connect with me on the Beating Broke accounts: Twitter and Facebook.
When my health began to suffer a few years ago thanks to stress, being overweight, and having some intestinal issues, I started taking much better care of myself. That meant eating organic foods, following a Paleo diet, and losing over 70 pounds.
I used to always say I didn’t have money to buy organic foods, but my health issues weren’t cheap, so I decided in the long run, eating the best food I could was a priority, even if it was more expensive. Over the years, though, I’ve found ways to cut costs on eating organic. One way is renting an organic apple tree.
How Does Renting an Apple Tree Work?
I simply Googled “rent an apple tree” to find one near us. Then, I rented one apple tree for $55. All the apples on that tree were mine. I paid in the spring, and the Paula Red apples were ready in August.
The farm called me to tell me when the apples were ripe, and then I and my family headed out to the orchard to pick the apples. It took less than 45 minutes, and we left with 94 pounds of organic apples.
What Did We Do With All Those Apples?
Paula Reds don’t stay good for long, so we turned them into applesauce. (And we ate a lot of them fresh.) We ended up with 28 quarts of applesauce, which I stored in the freezer. It took me, my husband and son working together 7 hours to process all of the apples.
We didn’t have to add any sugar because they were naturally sweet.
How Much Did We Save?
The lowest price I have been able to find for organic applesauce is $2.50 for 16 ounces at Trader Joe’s. Just like our applesauce, Trader Joe’s applesauce only contains organic apples. There are 32 ounces in a quart, so one quart of Trader Joe’s applesauce is $5.00.
One quart of our homemade applesauce from apples on our rented tree is approximately $1.96. Overall, we saved $85 and will have enough applesauce to last us through the winter.
We also signed up for another apple tree in October for apples that are suitable for storage. We’ll be able to keep them in our refrigerator for several months and eat them fresh. If we get another 94 pounds, we’ll be paying just 58 cents a pound, which will be a significant savings over the grocery stores where I can never seem to find organic apples for less than $1.99 a pound.
It’s Not Just About the Savings
Still, it’s not just about the savings. What matters is that we know exactly where the apples came from and how they were processed. In addition, they are local, in season, and organic, which is the best way to eat food.
If you want to feed your family healthier foods but feel that they are out of your budget, don’t despair. There are several unique ways to feed your family organic food on a budget. Renting an apple tree is just one of those ways. We’ll be sure to do this again next year.
Have you done something like this? Do you buy food direct from the farmer?
Melissa is a writer and virtual assistant. She earned her Master’s from Southern Illinois University, and her Bachelor’s in English from the University of Michigan. When she’s not working, you can find her homeschooling her kids, reading a good book, or cooking. She resides in New York, where she loves the natural beauty of the area.
